


the death of all things that I've seen and unseen

by Butterbeerandbutterknives



Series: Wasteland, Baby! [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anorexia, Bulimia, Chupacabras, EDNOS, Eating Disorders, Fainting, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Purgatory, Purging, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24224890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterbeerandbutterknives/pseuds/Butterbeerandbutterknives
Summary: Dean's knuckles brushed against the familiar spot behind his tongue, but nothing happened to the weight pressing low in his stomach, or the buzz of panic swarming his head. Suddenly, he felt like he was back down in hell, the only other place he hasn’t had this creature comfort to fill whatever empty space he was carrying at that moment.
Relationships: Benny Lafitte/Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Wasteland, Baby! [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2155410
Comments: 10
Kudos: 92





	the death of all things that I've seen and unseen

**Author's Note:**

> Strong Trigger Warning for Eating Disorders
> 
> Title is from Hozier's _Wastland Baby_.

Purgatory was never meant to house humans. This became increasingly obvious to Dean during his third night trapped there, when as he pressed a hand against one of the walls of the cavern he sought refuge in and shoved a hand down his throat. His knuckles brushed against the familiar spot behind his tongue, but nothing happened to the weight pressing low in his stomach, or the buzz of panic swarming his head. Suddenly, he felt like he was back down in hell, the only other place he hasn’t had this creature comfort to fill whatever empty space he was carrying at that moment. Dean tried again, more forcefully, adding a third finger, and violently twisting them in his throat, clawing until he tasted blood.  


And then he stood and fought until he met Benny. He ate what Benny ordered him to, no more, no less, and after almost passing out a handful of times Benny seemed to grasp the unspoken rules of their symbiotic relationship. His memories of humanhood being hundreds of years in the past, Benny seemed to time the meals around whenever he was hungry, tossing Dean a jackrabbit or small basilisk every few days before drinking the human’s blood. Afterwards, Dean would find himself wrapped in the vampire’s coat, and the lightheadedness from blood loss was close enough to the high of hunger that he would feel almost okay for a while. It’s in these quiet moments that Dean lets Benny fuck him, and with blue eyes and dark hair staring at him, he wonders why he still feels so empty.  


They find Cas by the river, and after convincing him to join the group, the three camp together, and Dean falls in love with the Angell all over again. He loves Benny, too, but they quit having sex and focus on getting out of there. At the end of their first day as a triad, Benny puts on some water to boil near the cliffside and places a simple trap on the other side to slow down anything that is attracted to the fire. Castiel carefully produced a bundle of white sage from his coat, explaining that he’d gathered it the previous day, lest he come across a fae.  


“I have far more than I foresee myself needing.” He said softly. “I’ll make you some tea.” Adding the herbs carefully to the metal coffee tin they’d found sixty miles south, Dean took relish in the familiar sight of the angel, his face warmed by the light the fire produced. The empty space was filled now, and he could relax.  


The next day, Castiel questioned Dean, wanting to know when he’d last eaten. “I’m okay Cas.” He reassured. “This place isn’t meant for humans, so I don’t find myself hungry very often here.” Castiel squinted and tilted his head, as if pondering something, but remained silent.  


At the end of the third day, Benny was beginning to slow on his feet, and his punches seemed lackluster. When they made camp that night, Dean rolled his sleeve up after they’d had their fill of hot water and pulled his knife out. “What are you doing?” Castiel quired.  


“Benny needs to eat.” Dean responded, and promptly ran the blade against his scarred wrist.  


The vampire licked his lips, his fangs instinctually protruding. “I should find you something to eat first, brother.” But a drop rolled down the flesh of Dean’s wrist, and anytime for planning was over as Benny suckled carefully.  


“Dean.” Castiel said firmly. “He survived a long while without you. He will not perish if he does not have access to human blood.”  


“He won’t be able to keep up if he’s starving, Cas.” Dean replied. “Sure, he can survive, but there’s no way he’s making it to the gate if he doesn’t feed.” He felt himself pale a bit, and he slumped against the rock behind him. He tried to gently push the vampire away, but the only response he got was a small growl, signifying Benny hadn’t yet had his fill.  


Castiel kneeled next to the hunter. “Dean?” He asked softly, putting a hand softly on the man’s shoulder. “You’ve gone pale, are you feeling alright?”  


The vampire pulled away from the cut, wrapping a length of cloth around it. His head was clear now that he was full, and he hadn’t realized how bad of shape Dean was in when he began his frenzy. “Shit, brother.” He drawled. “You should’ve said something earlier. I’ll go get you something to eat.” He looked at the angel. “You can keep guard, I assume?”  


“Of course, I always watch over Dean.” Castiel murmured softly.  


“Give him your coat.” Benny suggested. “He gets cold real easy afterwards.” The vampire stalked off into the brush, searching for something marginally edible, and Castiel wrapped his trench coat around Dean’s shoulders carefully.  


“I’m okay, Cas.” Dean reassured; the corners of his mouth turned upwards ever so slightly. When the angel’s hands begin to tug his shirt hem up, he spoke again. “What are you doing?”  


“Vampires all began as humans.” Cas explained. “As such, they have a very human feeding pattern. While they cannot die of starvation, even a few days without blood will leave them ravenous. You, however, can die of starvation, especially with the number of calories you’ve been burning daily. I need to see exactly how emaciated you are, and I cannot effectively do that with your clothes on.” Yanking the final layer of shirts up to the hunter’s chest, he gave a dissatisfied growl. “Dammit Dean.”  


Bathing hadn’t been on Dean’s priority list since he was on earth. He knew he’d lost weight, having had to punch a few holes in his belt, but he hadn’t looked at his body in months, always yearning for protection against the cold. “Shit.” He murmured, looking down at his protruding ribcage.  


Castiel’s voice was stern. “That is an understatement, Dean. How can you be so foolish? To resort back to this in a place where you’re one wrong move away from being beheaded at all times?”  


* * *

_This_ had always been a matter left unspoken between them. It had happened throughout his childhood a few times as an intention, but mostly as a way to save money so Sammy could eat. By the time he was old enough to hustle pool, the starvation served as a distraction. After a hunt, Dad would treat them to a big meal, and sometimes Dean would purge after, either through vomiting or exercise, but it wasn’t ever regular enough for his weight to be impacted. It got bad after Sam left for Stanford, and the empty space in his stomach seemed to lessen the empty space in whatever shithole of a motel he found himself in.  


It wasn’t Dad who figured it out, of course not. He checked in on the phone every now and then, calls getting farther apart each month. It seemed as though without Sammy, they had no glue to hold them together, and the empty spaces near Dean grew larger. It was Bobby who put the pieces together, after Dean showed up at his doorstep with two broken ribs and a hastily sewn up gash on his forehead.  


“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” Bobby commented sarcastically, before going to get the first aid kit.  


The next morning, Dean brushed off the offer of pancakes a little too quickly and found himself on the receiving end of a patented Singer stare, but the older man let it slide. It wasn’t until the two were headed into town to pick up some salt that Bobby spoke. He’d claimed that Dean should drive and clear his head, and he knew exactly what the marks on the back of Dean’s fingers meant.  


“You’ve gotten awful thin, boy.” He said, letting the sentence hang for a minute.  


Dean tightened his grip on the wheel. “Money’s been tight.”  


Bobby shook his head. “That ain’t the real answer and you know it.”  


“Don’t.” Dean warned, his voice wobbling.  


And so, Bobby didn’t.

He kept pushing Dean plates of food, and keeping him distracted after meals, always prepared with some meaningless task or creature to research. But he didn’t bring it up even as Dean was leaving a week later, and simply hugged him a little longer. “You’re always welcome here.” Bobby told him. “For any reason.”  
Every now and again, Bobby would help him, even though Dean never asked. The younger hunter would show up with a problem that could’ve been answered over the phone, or with a bullshit excuse that he’d been in the area. Dean would stay for a week, or maybe two, before John called and Dean would head out on a hunt, feeling a little less empty.  


Dean didn’t know how much Sam knew, but he’d walked in on a mumbled conversation between Bobby and Sam in one of their stays after Dean crawled his way out of his own coffin. He overheard words like _eating disorder_ and _coping mechanisms _before announcing his arrival and hearing the two go silent. After that, Sam found a way to be around after meals, at least for a while. When Ruby entered Sam’s life again, his concern for Dean’s shrinking waistline seemed to exit.  
It was different between him and Cas. The angel didn’t understand it, but he tried to help. At first, it was simply a simple healing of the cuts on the back of his throat when his fingernails got too long, or a hamburger when his vision became tunneled from hunger. Eventually though, Castiel seemed to sense whenever Dean was having a rough time, and would spend more time with the Winchesters, brushing it off as a quiet time in heaven, or claiming to need their help. They’d never spoken out loud about this, until now. __

* * *

“I’m okay, Cas.” He reassured. “Purgatory isn’t meant for me. I don’t think I can die a human death here.”  


Castiel paced around the fire. “Clearly not, because your body should be eating it’s internal organs by now. You obviously haven’t been eating properly since you arrived here.”  


Dean snorted. “Well you know, I thought about going to the McDonalds around the corner, but y’know...”  


Castiel scowled. “Food may be scarce here Dean, but a daily meal is entirely doable.”  


Dean shivered, pulling the coat tighter around the neck. “It’s fine, Cas. I’ll be okay once we’re topside again.”  


“Dean, you are dangerously underweight.” Castiel emphasized, crouching down. “We do not know where the exit leads to. If you run into any trouble up there, you will die. If you lose much more weight down here, you will die the second you are back on planet earth, because you will have become too thin to live. We need to figure something out.”  


“Figure what out?” Benny’s voice called from the darkness, before stepping into the light of the fire.  


Castiel’s eyes flickered to Dean, before looking back to Benny. “Nothing. I take it your hunting was successful?”  


The vampire held a small jackalope up by the neck. “Mind if I borrow your knife to clean it?” He asked Dean. When the hunter began to protest, he cut him off. “You’ve got to be pretty weak, brother. Just let wings and I take care of you for a bit.”  


Castiel sat on one side of Dean, trying to offer what little body heat his vessel produced, and once Benny had the meat cooking, he excused himself to check the perimeter. In the newfound privacy, Castiel brushed his fingers across the stubble that decorated Dean’s jawline. “I’m surprised your knife is still sharp enough to shave with.” He murmured.  


Dean turned his head to face the angle, tugging gently on Cas’ beard. “You should try it sometime.” He chastised softly.  


Castiel traced his finger softly up to Dean’s ear. “I’ve never had to shave before. This place affects my grace.” He explained. “I’m still angelic, as it doesn’t cancel it completely, it’s just dampened, making me a little more human.” His fingertips grazed over Deans lips, before capturing them in a gentle kiss.  


“Cas,” Dean moaned. They’d kissed before, not like this. It was always animalistic, a gateway to the impassioned sex they used as little more than stress relief. Any tenderness was saved for quiet words and longing glances, for a physical touch to be so soft was a gentle rekindling of the passion Dean loved so much about the angel.  


Pulling away slowly, Dean felt Castiel’s breath brush against his face softly, before a twig snapping broke the silence. Castiel shot up instantaneously, and Dean was in awe of the former solider of heaven as the angel blade was pulled out of the short sleeves of his scrubs. “Stay down!” Castiel commanded Dean, just as the creature emerged from the dense underbrush. It was dog like, but thin and fanged. It extended scales on its back, and as it rose onto two legs, so did Dean. Dizzy from hunger and blood loss, the edges of his vision were black and as he strode forward to step in front of Castiel and the tunnels of sight collapsed into complete darkness as he fell, boneless into a heap.  


* * *

Dean was warm when he woke up. He smiled a bit, as it meant he had woken up before Sammy, his fingers grasped the motel blanket, his body sinking deeper into the mattress that smelled of pine and--  


Dean shot up ramrod straight, grabbing desperately for whatever weapon he could get his hands on first. The events of the past year flooded him, and he quickly remembered he was in purgatory, where he shouldn’t feel warm, and where he certainly shouldn’t feel safe.  


“Easy there, Dean.” Benny reassured. “Just rest for a bit.”  


As his eyes readjusted, Dean realized he was in a cave, where a fire could burn without attracting any monsters. He was on a pile of pine branches, with both Cas’ and Benny’s coats draped over him. “How long was I out?” he questioned blearily.  


“Couple of hours, I think.” Benny replied. “It’s cloudy up here, so I can’t see where exactly the moon is.”  


“Up here?” Dean inquired. Still feeling surprisingly dizzy, he relented and leaned back onto his elbows.  


“We’re about a quarter of a way up a mountain right now.” Benny answered. “Your friend says it’s the quickest route to the exit.” He rearranged the fire, prodding the flaming logs with bare hands.  


Dean blinked. For having been surrounded solely by monsters for the better half of a year, he still found himself taken aback by the more physical reminders of Benny’s inhumanity. “Where is Cas, by the way?”  


“He went out to hunt. We lost that jackalope to the Chupacabra.” Benny reassured.  


Dean furrowed his brow. “That thing didn’t look like any Chupacabra I’ve ever seen.”  


“It was a Puerto Rican Chupacabra.” Castiel’s deep voice came from the darkness. The only light was the fire, as they were too far from the entrance to soak up any of the moon’s meager rays. “They are far less terrestrial than the Chupacabra that populate the areas near the Rio Grande.”  


“Are you saying that thing was an alien?” Dean groaned.  


Castiel sat down near the fire, in between Benny and Dean, so he was facing the entrance. As he began carefully plucking black feathers from the creature he held, he replied. “Technically, no. It was born on earth, but it did however descend from it’s ancestors who landed near the El Yunca rainforest in the 1970’s and-“  


Dean cut him off, confusion apparent on his features as he looked at what Castiel was preparing. “Does that bird have tits?”  


“Well, it doesn’t have mammary glands as it’s young hatch from eggs, but the Elwetritsch does have nipples and pronounced breast tissue.” Castiel explained. “I can remove them if they bother you, but they contain a significant portion of it’s nutritional value. While difficult to catch, they have been a savored delicacy throughout much of history in southwest Germany.”  


Dean pulled himself up to a mostly sitting position. “I’m good Cas.” He reassured. “I’m sure I just got a bit dehydrated; we should keep moving, cover some more ground tonight.”  


For a moment, Benny and Castiel seemed to share a single voice. “No.” They said in unison.  


“We’re high enough up that very few things will bother us here.” Benny insisted. “This is as safe as we can get in this place, brother. Let’s enjoy it for a day or two and let us all get our strengths up.”  


“He’s right.” Castiel confirmed. “And you certainly did not pass out from dehydration. I suspect you are hypotensive and hypoglycemic and have been for a while. You shouldn’t have stood; you could have kicked yourself into hypovolemic shock. You may not have to fear starving to death here, but your eating disorder not without consequences.”  


“Eating disorder?” Dean squawked. “I may be fucked up, Cas, but I sure as hell aren’t a teenage girl.”  


“Knock it off, both of you.” Benny snapped. “Look, I don’t know what an eating disorder is or what it has to do with teenage girls, but you two fighting ain’t productive.”  


Pursing his lips, Castiel continued plucking feathers, albeit now with more force than was strictly necessary. “I apologize for upsetting you Dean.” Castiel spoke, his voice flat. “But I have seen what havoc willful starvation and purposeful vomiting can inflict on a human. I watched over Saint Wilgefortis of Portugal during her final years and witnessed the death of Catherine of Sienna. I will not apologize for fretting over your health. We must figure out a way to release you from purgatory and get you back to Sam. A place such as this was never meant to hold something as sacred as a soul.”  


“I’m sorry for snapping.” Dean relented before sinking back into a reclined position against the cave wall, feeling unexpectedly weary.  


With the tip of his angel blade, Castiel carefully removed the nipples from the Elwetritsch before carefully fileting the breasts. Setting them aside, he quickly butterflied the remaining carcass before pulling a handful of rosemary from his pocket and grinding it into a paste between two rocks. He sprinkled some on the seasoning and draped it on a stick that hung across the fire. Grabbing another two rocks, he flattened the breasts, filling them with some of the decimated rosemary, as well as some other kind of green, and then rolled them up before tying them shut with the rosemary stems. “I saw a woman do something akin to this in the 1720’s, just outside of the district of Provance in France.” He explained softly. “She used a chicken breast, rather than an Elwetritsch, but she remarked to her family that the rosemary helped to temper the bitterness of the dandelion greens.” He wiped his hands together carefully. “I do not wish to give you salmonella; I am going to cleanse my hands in the snow.”  


Dean watched as the angel’s figure slowly disappeared into the darkness. It was Benny’s voice that pulled him out of his trance like state. “You really love him, don’t you?”  


Dean looked at the vampire, deciding his next carefully. “Benny, you’ve been by my side for months, I-“  


Benny cut him off. “It’s alright, brother. The sex we had… that was for taking solace in. No more, no less. You’ve found the one person who makes the world feel less shitty to you. Just do me a favor and don’t squander it.”  


Dean allowed himself to lay down fully. “Thank you, Benny.”  


When Castiel entered once more, he looked wearily at the cooking meat, saying, “It should be done in 15 minutes or so. Perhaps I should go collect some water to boil.”  


“Sit down, Cas, you look tired.” Dean expressed, watching how the shadows pooled on his companion’s face. When the angel sat rather than argue, the hunter felt a chill of worry run down his spine. “Shit.” He realized. “You are tired, aren’t you?”  


Castiel sighed before resting his head in his hands. “This place… it weakens my grace by the day.” He admitted. “Fatigue is simply something I must become used to, I suppose.”  


“This isn’t good, Cas.” Dean stressed.  


“Don’t fret, Dean.” Cas reassured. “I have made it jut fine thus far.”  


“So have I.” Dean pointed out. “And that doesn’t stop you from worrying about me.”  


“Dean…”Castiel trailed off, unsure of what words to say next.  


“Just come lay next to me for a bit, until the idle-whatever-“  


“Elwetritsch.” The angel corrected.  


“Until the Elwetritsch is done.” Dean finished, rolling his eyes a bit. “I’ll eat and then take the first lookout shift.”  


“I require no rest.” Castiel said, sitting down next to Dean. “So, I will keep watch while you and Benny sleep.”  


Too tired to argue, and amongst the sweet undernotes of the scent that stuck to the angel despite the blood coating Castiel’s scrubs, Dean found himself drifting asleep. As he existed in the space between consciousness and slumber, he felt, for the first time in a while, that things might be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> This was strange for me to write- it's based on personal experience, but I haven't ever had an eating disorder. I have, however, dealt with disordered eating due to OCD, and while I'm generally of the write-what-you-know camp when it comes to fanfiction, an eating disorder felt more "Dean" to me than OCD. I do want to say that I am by no means insinuating that being in a relationship is a fix for any sort of mental illness. Hell, I have like 16 pages of different fics in this verse I've been writing whenever I feel like compulsively starving myself, and I am not single. I hope you enjoyed it, or at least you found a bit of comfort. If you think I should extend this verse a bit, let me know- like I said, I have a few others written that I could probably edit into something semi-okay. Always keep fighting, - Skye


End file.
